January 31, 2015

December 14, 2014

At the traffic signal I rest my
eyes on the lines in red sticker above the windshield, barely clearing the
bobbing skull cap of the impatient rickshaw driver as he waits for the signal
to turn green.

The saying by Nirankari Baba goes ….

मानवताकीक़द्र करेदिलसे

मानवताखिलउठेफिरसे

-निरंकारीबाबा

Manavta ki kadr kare dil se

Manavta khil utey phir se

-Nirankari Baba

In the backseat my world opens
out to fellow riders and familiar touch points on my morning commute. Only
occasionally will the ride offer up something more than the back of the
rickshaw driver’s head. So I read the lines again.

While I’m not surprised to see
the lines, for rickshaw drivers will sometimes philosophise and reflect on the teachings
of the Guru they follow, putting them up in their rickshaws for company, I was
surprised to see a Muslim rickshaw driver sport a non-Muslim (Sikh) “Godman’s” teaching
above his head, not something you see often if at all.

Translated, it reads

Value humanity with your heart

(And) Humanity will flower again

-Nirankari Baba

“You put that up?” I ask him at
the next traffic signal, pointing to the lines above his head.

“Yes, I did,” he replies, riding slow
and easy.

“Good one,” I let him know.

He nodds without turning his face.

“Does Nirankari Baba hold Shibir
(rallies)?

“He does. He had one at Airoli
last time,” he replied.

“Do you attend them?” I ask him.

“No. The night shift guys get to
attend,” implying he doesn’t get the day off from riding his rickshaw to attend
the rally.

The 50+ photographs going on
display were made over my years of meandering around India, seeking moments that place
the everyday in historical, cultural and traditional contexts. And where they
don’t, I sought moments devoid of drama or in the very moment of promising one.

They are about people, and their
immediate and far contexts. Moments caught in transit. Moments that came to
stay with me.

I’ve attempted to turn the
fleeting into a temporary permanence, seeking their meaning as much in what the
moments framed seek to reveal as in their act of concealment for, meanings live
in dualities, and die in convergence.

Sometimes, long after you last
walked a street, all it takes you to remember it and all that went on in the
middle, is but one framed moment that captures the essence of what you liked
about the street, and how being a part of it made you feel, even if it was
temporary and you were only a passing soul on your way elsewhere.

The opposite is equally true. If
the framed moment is evocative, combines people and their contexts memorably,
aligning elements in ways that makes it distinctive, then streets that are
otherwise unremarkable, or even hostile, turn into memorable ones.

All it takes is one picture to
define a feeling, one feeling to define an experience, and one experience to
define an understanding – of a place and its people, and of self.

This is what makes time on the
street such a dynamic place to be out on with a camera, and a reason why I seek
those moments to frame so I can come away from the place with a feeling for it,
for, without one it’s as if it never existed.

Often, the ‘magical’ moments slip
away but every once in a while there’s one that sticks with you and defines
your journey, for you.

With Crossings: Moments in Passing, I hope to bring those moments to the
fore and share my feelings of those journeys, more an attempt than a certainty.

~

Why Crossings?

In crossings, moments
suspend colours of meaning.

In meandering on the streets and
off it, round corners and straight stretches, I soon realised that in passing
people and places along the way, I was actually passing moments revealing their
lives in passing – everyday moments framed against cultural, linguistic,
architectural, and occasionally historical, backdrops.

I was not so much passing a
moment as walking into the next one, and the next. Together they strung out the
street in a series of temporary human portraits, some of whom briefly came
alive in the moment they crossed over from banal beginnings to equally banal
endings.

It was in the momentary
crossings, when transforming moments flirted with form and colour, sometimes
with intent and import, briefly capturing the essence of the place, that I
sought meaning in my meanderings.

~

Do come over and see the
exhibition, and if family and friends are not averse to seeing yet another
India-centric exhibition of photographs, bring them along too, and help put the
word out. Thanks in advance.

September 26, 2014

August 31, 2014

Anyone who has tried tearing a
milk packet with their teeth will know how difficult it is, much less drinking
from the irregular cut it opens in the plastic packet.

Now imagine a puppy with milk teeth
trying to open a plastic packet of milk.

I spied one roadside in Kalupur on
Independence Day after stepping out of a shop with a water bottle to keep the
two of us company on the three hour walk through the neighbourhood adjoining
Swami Narayan temple.

The discarded packet held some
milk, attracting the attention of a stray puppy that made getting at the milk its
early morning task.

It wasn’t easy tearing at the
thick plastic given its grip was limited by unsteady paws. Waiting for the
group to emerge from the temple, I waited, and watched.

I stayed away thinking the day
(Aug 15) was as apt as any for the pup to exercise its independence.

But a female sparrow did not think it
that way as it hopped into the frame before …..

….. hopping around the pup’s back
to see how exactly the inexperienced pup was going about it.

I wonder if it came around to
lend a helping hand nee beak. I doubt it. If the sparrow was smart it’d wait
until the pup had opened a gash in the plastic before stepping in.

This is one reason to not package
milk in plastic packets. Bring back the bottles that can be knocked over.

The milk bottles are long gone
where I come from so I suppose it’s no use crying over spilt milk now.

July 05, 2014

“The bus left just five minutes
ago,” the youth in formal office wear and cradling his laptop bag said as I got into
the queue behind him in the shade of an old Pipal tree that has managed to hold its ground even
as tar and concrete has all but choked it where it enters the earth in a sacred
pact with life.

I have no idea how water manages
to seep down to its roots anymore. Only a dogged determination of not wanting to
roll over and die at a place where it took root long before the earth that
sustained it was tarred over to make roads, must keep it alive. I cannot think
of any other reason.

“The next bus should be here
soon,” I replied.

Office goers were beginning to queue up behind me. Under an
overcast sky threatening more rain after it had rained out the city the day before,
the lot of us were no doubt hoping to reach our offices dry.

The twenty-something youth in
full sleeves shrugged his shoulders and managed a half smile; together they
seemed to imply Well, you never know. I returned his smile, adding, “With the
rains around, the buses get stuck in traffic and get delayed on their round
trips to Andheri and back.”

I was looking to make small talk
to while away the waiting but nature had other plans as I would soon find out.

I distinctly heard the splatter
as it hit the ground a fraction of a second after I felt something brush my
left sleeve and hand.

A crow had emptied its load from
somewhere high up in the tree and I wasn’t about to look up just then and risk
collecting a second fall on my face. Checking my shirt sleeves for stains I was
relieved at having escaped with only faint trails of the familiar dark gooey as
opposed to the wide splotch on the youth’s shoulder ahead.

After I pointed it out to him he turned his neck, pulled at his sleeve to get a good look and let out a wry
smile before quipping, “It’s said that bird droppings landing on the left
shoulder bring luck. Maybe I’ll get lucky today.”

“Are your appraisals due today?”
I asked him.

“Haha,” came the reply.

Amused and heartened at the
equanimity of the cheery office goer looking at the bright side of things while fielding
calls from his office even as he was looking to clean up the mess on his shirt, I looked
at my own left hand and sleeve. It had collected a bit of bird splatter itself or shall
I say a bit of “good luck”.

I wondered if a bit of luck would
come my way as well.

Pointing to the small paan-bidi
shop beside the bus shelter, I said, “He might be able to spare you some water
to wash it off.”

“No, it’s okay,” he replied as he
retrieved tissues from his bag and began scrubbing the bird dropping off.

Two fellow commuters behind me, a
middle-aged woman and an old man, wary of being singled out for avian
generosity stepped back clear off the tree. But the tree had a wide canopy. The
woman would keep looking up every now and then until it was time to get onto
the bus.

I opened my umbrella for
‘protection’.

Stepping sideways and looking up
I saw the culprit, a male crow. Oblivious to his morning ritual having stirred up the crowd
beneath, he sat still beside a nest of twigs occupied by a female. It’s likely both were on parenting duties.

After the youth had cleaned up
his shirt the best he could, he rolled up the tissue paper and looked for a
place to chuck it. Spotting a makeshift plastic garbage bag stuffed with empty
cigarette packs, tobacco rolls, chocolate wrappers and sachets of mouth
fresheners and paan masala discarded by customers shopping at the paan-bidi shop, he
asked the owner if he could chuck the used tissue in with the other garbage in the
plastic bag.

The paanwallah, a lean
middle-aged man sitting with his legs dangling sideways from the platform that extended from the six open shelves painted orange, the colour associated with
Lord Hanuman whose photo depicting him as Panchamukha took pride of place
alongside Goddess Lakshmi in an upper shelf, nodded in the negative without
taking his eyes off the betel nut chopper he was busy cracking open betel nuts into small pieces.

Instead, the paanwallah jerked
his head sideways to point to the back of his shop where the youth was free to
throw his garbage. Embarrassed at being refused permission to use the shop’s
garbage bag, the youth curled up the tissue into a ball and
tossed it behind the shop!

~

The paan-beedi shop adjacent to a
Sulabh Sauchalaya was no different from the thousands that dot Mumbai, small
affairs that stand in impossibly tiny spaces roadside, often operating as what can only be termed hole-in-the-wall affairs.

Largely manned by North-Indians,
more likely from Uttar Pradesh than Bihar, these
paan-beedi shops are a lifeline for all and sundry addicted to tobacco based
products.

Stocking cigarettes, beedi, match boxes, tobacco, lime powder,
betel nuts, betel leaves, badeshep
(fennel seed), elaichi (cardamom), and
supari, these shops serve smokers,
and those who enjoy a quick bite of khaini
and paan, to get them through the
day.

Elaichi packaged in small sachets is a relatively recent offering, serving as a mouth freshener more for smokers of cigarettes and beedis than those who chew raw tobacco or
prefer to mix it with lime and water for a dose of khaini. Now, khaini is
also available to buy ready-made in shiny sachets.

Before gutkha got banned, gutkha
sachets used to be on display prominently, hanging in long strips from hooks or strings. Here, they were replaced by strips of “Chutki” – mouth fresheners.
Chutki is Hindi for ‘small’ or ‘little’ though there is nothing small or little
about the face of a sultry model gracing the sachet.

Matchboxes with a top for a cover were named ‘Toy’, stating the obvious that a top is a toy. They could’ve
as easily named it ‘Top’ instead of ‘Toy’ and served both needs – identify the
toy as a 'top' while extolling the quality of match sticks as ‘top’.

I failed to spot the once familiar
cigarette brands that were a regular at paan-bidi shops – Four
Square, Chancellor, Berkeley, Blue
Bird, Charminar, Scissors, Bristol, Style,
Charms, A-1, Panama, and Gold Flake among others.

Many of us would be familiar with
those distinctive packs and cigarette advertisements before the ads were banned.

All I could spot in the shop
were packs of Marlboro and Wills Classic.

Of the beedis less said the better. They never stood a chance once micro cigarette
brands like Blue Bird entered the market at the very cheap. He had stocked some beedi
packs in one of the shelves.

~

There was still no sign of the bus.

A BEST bus conductor from a
recently arrived bus serving a different route stepped up to the shop for some
tobacco before heading back for his return journey.

The Sulabh Sauchalaya was busy. An
eunuch who works a traffic signal near the bus stop hurried to the Sauchalaya,
“her” colourful bindi set off by dark complexion. “She” was smiling to herself as she skirted rickshaw drivers gathered outside after washing up at the sauchalaya.

The queue for the bus had gotten longer, backing all
the way up to the road. Still no bus. Overhead, the skies were getting darker.

Then the bus came, finally. I got in.

~

Later that afternoon the lot of us in the office where I work were handed our appraisals and new salary terms. I couldn't help thinking that the bird dropping splatter on my left land
had worked its magic after all.

I looked at my letter not knowing
what to make of it at first. I noticed some clever jugglery in it. But they had good words to say about my work except that words are never enough to tide over inflation.

Maybe my quantum of luck would've been greater had I taken the full load as it dropped from the
sky. Who knows what might’ve been.

June 30, 2014

Fishing boats had returned from their forays in the sea off the coast of Daman. The end of the fishing season was near, not in the least because of the approaching monsoons. Catch had dwindled greatly. One boat owner told me that the last 5-6 runs into the sea had resulted in losses. It was time to wind up until after the monsoons.

May 27, 2014

In 2012 my friend, Philip, and I left
for Uttaranchal to see tigers and more, making Mohan our base from which to explore the CorbettNational Park. It turned out to be an
unforgettable trip, not least because of the tigers. Some memories remained,
some did not. Yet others refused to leave us even after we did.

In a series of posts loosely connecting
events, experiences and observations posted in no particular order, I hope to
record our journey through Corbett Country and beyond from what I remember or
noted from that year travelling through Uttaranchal on a whim and a fancy.

~

The milestone read: Mohan 0.

The road from Ramnagar had wound
along hills keeping us company from the time we had hefted our bags into the
sturdy Mahindra that Govind had eventually managed to wrestle to the Ramnagar
railway station, two hours after the train had deposited us one early May
morning in the state of Uttaranchal or Uttarakhand as it's also known.

~

The overnight journey from New Delhi was uneventful
except for the anticipation that had gripped us both, Philip and I, on what was
my maiden journey, and Philip’s second, to erstwhile Corbett country.

I had lain awake in the night
unable to sleep, recalling episodes from Jim Corbett’s Man-Eaters of Kumaon, fuelling my fevered imagination further when
we passed Moradabad
at half past three in the morning. Then Aliganj, and Kashipur followed.
Ramnagar was next.

The night before, I had arranged
with Manoj, the manager of a hotel in Mohan, or resort as they’re commonly
advertised, to have a vehicle meet us at the station to bring us to Mohan,
confirming our departure from New
Delhi, and messaging him as we approached Ramnagar.

“I’d have to find somebody that
early to send to the railway station,” Manoj had said in a tone that vacillated
to say the least, sowing doubts if he could muster someone at four in the
morning to have him present at Ramnagar by five when the Ranikhet Express was
expected to arrive.

“It’s fine if you can send
someone out a little later, we can wait on the platform for some time,” I had
assured him, “But not later than 5:45 am, surely not beyond 6:00 am.”

Manoj had sounded far away over
the crackling line, querulous in snatches as if buffeted by storms wreaking
havoc in a remote valley in the middle of nowhere.

It was enough to nudge me
into imagining his outfit to be encircled by hills with ridges crested by tall
Sal trees the sun had to fight to break through, ridges the tigers roamed in
the night except I didn’t know just then how popular the Corbett National Park
had become with visitors out of Delhi, and how populated the stretches ringing
the Tiger Reserve.

Adding to disturbance on the line
was the unrelenting noise on the platform at Old Delhi railway station as we
awaited the Ranikhet Express the night before. Toshi had left us both at a back
entrance to the station before disappearing into the Delhi night.

In the faint light of mercury
lamps we had negotiated the crowds on the platform before taking the stairs up
and descending into the cauldron of platform 12. We might just as well have
descended into a sea of refugees awaiting the last train home and not known the
difference, such was the mass of humanity and clamour that greeted us on the
platform. Shipments of goods awaiting delivery at stations along the way
crowded it further.

“Yes, he will be there at the
Ramnagar station to bring you back to Mohan,” Manoj had confirmed.

At first Philip and I had debated
our options for our stay, most notably Dhikuli, before settling on Mohan, both
located along the boundary of the CorbettNational Park and
separated by 14 kms.

“Dhikuli is no good,” Philip had
opined in the days before the trip as we weighed options, debating locations in
the vicinity of the Corbett Tiger Reserve that’d give us the best shot at
covering the terrain in and around the Tiger Reserve at short notice.

“Dhikuli’s too crowded with
hotels for long stretches. Mohan is better,” Philip insisted with an eye on
birdwatching in the vicinity of our stay. So Mohan it was.

I only hoped Mohan was not so far
away that we’d find it difficult to travel to entry points to the CorbettNational Park, most notably the Amdanda
Gate near Ramnagar that opened access to the Bijrani zone.

Bijrani is where the tiger is,
everyone who knew anything about Corbett had said online in the days before we left
on our journey.

~

Ranikhet Express rolled into
Ramnagar a few minutes past five in the morning. We barely felt the 239-odd kms
it had covered through the night from Delhi.

Moufossil stations had passed by
quietly in the night, no more than insignificant shadows in a crowd of
strangers strung along north India.

After a quick sip of chai at a
stall selling chips and biscuits among other packaged snacks, passengers had
filed out of Ramnagar Station to waiting rickshaws or transport arranged by
hotels they had booked for their stay.

As far as I could tell, the only
reason why tourists came to Ramnagar was CorbettNational Park.
Once CorbettNational Park
was ticked, some would continue to Ranikhet or Nainital or both. There were
other places but none as compelling as the lure of tigers.

By quarter past five the dawn had
broken and the quiet unique to very early mornings had settled on the platform
as I stepped off the train, wide eyed.

5:45 am turned to 6, still no
sign of the jeep Manoj had promised.

Auto-rickshaws crowding the
station entrance in time for the arrival of Ranikhet Express had competed
vigorously for tourists and locals alike before departing with their passengers
to the Ramnagar bus stand and beyond, to hotels in Dhikuli.

For ten rupees one
could hitch a ride to the bus stand that connected Ramnagar to other destinations
in Nainital district.

A lone SBI ATM expressly provided
for the convenience of tourists to the CorbettNational Park
stood at the exit, empty. Mosquitoes droned about the machine.

“The driver is coming,” Manoj
reassured me when I rung him up again to check on the promised transport; I
doubted if the tiger would prove as elusive. “Wait at the station,” Manoj
repeated. “He is on the way.”

“We’re waiting at the station
only,” I replied, barely disguising my disappointment at the delay. We’d hoped
to use the early morning for a foray in the forests about Mohan. It would’ve to
be scrapped.

The station was empty save one
rickshaw who hoped to convince us yet to ditch the hotel transport and hop
behind for a ride.

“If everyone waits for the hotel
transport what’s to become of us,” the rickshawallah entreated. “They (the
hotels) take away our business,” he added.

Dogs eyed our bags as we stood
outside for signs of Govind. We eyed the dogs in turn.

Equilibrium established, I turned
my attention to morning activity outside the station. Milkmen and roosters were
up and about. And so were children starting their school day.

Consignments (labelled RMR, code
for Ramnagar) offloaded from arriving trains had been carried out and loaded
onto Goods Carriers improvised from Vijeta scooters for dispatch to
destinations around the small town.

I had seen similar improvisations
(Jugaad) carried out with Enfield
Bullet 350 cc in Rajasthan to ferry people but none using Vijeta scooters until
now.

Actually I couldn’t quite
remember the last time I saw a Vijeta on the road let alone one modified into a transport carrier.

“Bas paanch minute mein pahoochta hoon, Saar,” Govind, the driver
dispatched by Manoj, said each time I checked on his progress after each “paanch minute” had turned fifteen.

Govind eventually turned up at
quarter past seven, a full two hours after alighting from Ranikhet Express at
Ramnagar. I heard him before he made the turn in the road that straightened on
its approach to the railway station, and in the days ahead I would grow
accustomed to the roar of the Mahindra, enough to alert the wildlife we hoped
to see stealthily.

Thin to the point of being
skeletal, Govind was built small and sported a ready smile, his pearly white
teeth set off by dark skin.

In time we would warm up to his effusive
personality, entertained by his stories about Corbett tigers and their hoary
exploits from the moment he turned the jeep in the direction of Mohan. Throwing
the gear forward was an effort to his wiry hands and he would bring his
shoulder to bear in affecting the change of gear.

Mohan, or Mohaan as locals
pronounce the name (Govind certainly favoured Mohaan) lay 21 kms. north of Ramnagar, the drive along the eastern
boundary of the CorbettNational Park barely
deviating from the course Kosi etched in the mountainous terrain.

Soon we would leave Ramnagar
behind as we made for Mohan along the Kosi.

~

Ramnagar.

I rolled it off my tongue slowly,
seeking in its sound the beginnings of a story from the 1930s.

It was in Ramnagar in the month
of May over eighty years ago that Jim Corbett alighted from the 1 p.m. train
before setting off on a twenty-four-mile foot journey to Kartkanoula, halting
at Gargia for the night before making for Mohan village on foot the next
morning.

Mohan Bazaar

After a brief halt at the Mohan
forest rest house, soon after meeting with locals from Mohan bazaar who, as he
notes in his celebrated book, The
Man-Eaters of Kumaon, filled him in on stories of the man-eater terrorising
Mohan, Jim Corbett left Mohan for Kartkanoula, a ‘four-thousand-foot’ climb
with his entourage of two servants and six Garhwalis, where the man-eater that
came to be known as The Mohan Man-eater,
had killed three villagers in the week before Corbett’s arrival.

By circumstance or by
coincidence, our choice of stay, Mohan, while in no way influenced by the fact
that it figured as the setting of The
Mohan Man-Eater back in the 1930s, had risen in notoriety as recently as a
little over a year ago after a tiger from the Corbett National Park turned
man-eater and preyed on villagers in the forest hamlets adjoining Mohan, namely
Gargia and Sunderkhal, the latter an illegal encroachment of settlers and a
determining factor in the rise of man-animal conflict in this part of the
country, and the former, home to a temple dedicated to Gargia Devi as Goddess
Parvati is known here.

Located a little over 14 kms.
from Ramnagar, the Gargia Devi temple is perched on a massive rock rising from
the Kosi. Over the duration of our stay we could pass by it along the road
connecting Ramnagar with Mohan.

“On Karthik Poornima, the temple
fair is worth coming to see. People come from far and wide offer prayers at the
temple,” Govind interjected the silence. We had pulled over to the side of the
road up an incline while I photographed the Kosi river and the temple in the
distance.

The river ran dry in some parts
along this stretch save a few areas where water had collected in inviting
pools, projecting an appearance of studied calm while contrasting starkly with
dry areas strewn with stones bleached white.

Standing on the edge of the hill
where it dropped away sharply to the Kosi below, I sought breaks in canopies of
trees growing on the slopes and photographed devotees enjoying a dip in spots
where the river had pooled its scarce resources for the summer.

It was a happy bunch, white teeth
and all. The calm was a far cry from the swollen beast of 2010 that had swept
away all it could reach, trees, animals, people, homes, hopes, everything.

The Kosi floods of 2010, whose then
water level can be seen marked prominently on the retaining wall of the Kosi
Barrage upstream of the river at Ramnagar where visitors cross over to the
Ramnagar Forest Division enroute to Sitavani to the forests extending from the
western banks of the mighty river, has entered the local lexicon as a permanent
reference.

“Dus mein” (Do Hazar Dus –
2010) has come to attain a significance formerly restricted to events such as
births and deaths in a human lifetime. At least that was the sense I got from
talking to people there.

Along the Kosi past Ramnagar, the
Kosi floods of 2010 divide the timeline of life into a before and an after, strengthened no doubt by the resentment among the displaced who view their
plight as unresolved to this day, atleast according to Kundan.

The story is no different along
the stretch on either side of Gargia, a stretch on the faultlines of
human-animal conflict since the days of Jim Corbett, considerably worsening
ever since.

Like always there was more that
meets the eye than what our own expectation had led us to believe.

This was promising to be more
than just about tigers, just how I would've wanted it.

Note: The series will continue in fits and starts, and in no particular
order of occurrence.

April 23, 2014

Mumbai goes to the polls tomorrow in the next phase of India's General Elections to cast its vote on who should govern India.

Stepping out early morning today it was impossible to miss the front page advertisement by the Shiv Sena in Hamara Mahanagar (Our City) featuring
the late Bal Thackeray, the Sena's founder, and in whose absence for the first time in the party’s history,
Shiv Sena will contest the Lok Sabha elections.

Sitting sideways, his legs
extended, the rickshaw driver was busy reading the newspaper when I hailed him for a ride.

“That newspaper front page ad is
the only sign I’ve seen in many days to remind me that a Lok Sabha election is
upon us,” I said to him as we got in. He smiled before folding the newspaper
and turning the key in the ignition.

The rickshaw chugged along
through morning traffic.

I continued, “It doesn’t look
like the election is upon us, unlike in the years before when large hoardings,
corner meetings, road-side pandals with loudspeakers blaring, processions of
party-flag waving youth astride revving motorcycles and foot marches were a common
sight during Lok Sabha elections. It seems so quiet now.”

“There has been noise but it is
less now,” he replied before commenting, “It’s good in a way that poll
expenditure is being watched. It’s such a waste when so many are poor and
struggling and here we had parties spending crores and being a general nuisance.”

While I agreed with him in part,
I didn’t make the effort to explain the other aspect of poll-related
expenditure – affording earning opportunities for poorer sections of societies. Crores are still being spent but less noisily than before.

Office-goers like your truly,
bound all day in offices, are more likely to miss out on roadside campaigning as opposed to rickshaw drivers criss-crossing the city.
Even then I’ve found election campaigning to be relatively quiet this time.

Soon talk turned to parties and
predictions.

“Which party do you want to see in power?” I pressed him.

At first he laughed before answering.

“I’m an AAP (Aam Admi Party)
member but I want to see Modi Sarkar in power.”

Strange as his reply seemed, it
made sense once he clarified.

“AAP cannot come to power (at the
centre) so it’s better that BJP gets the vote to improve its chances at forming
the Government. So I will vote for BJP,” he said.

Implicit in his dilemma and his
eventual choice of the party which would get his vote was the rejection of the
Congress “at all costs”, and the desire to ensure that his vote would not be
“wasted” on his own party (AAP) that had little or no chance of winning the mandate
to govern India. AAP, the upstart has a long way to go still.

BJP it seems has won the perception (that
it will win) vote to an extent that party members of other political parties, clear in their mind on who should not come to power (read Congress), will switch their votes to BJP to make their votes count.

It’s anybody guess how much this reason alone will affect
parties like AAP (written off) and how strong a factor will it be in pushing the BJP-led alliance ahead of the Congress-led one.

~

"Arvind Kejriwal ekdum perfect aadmi hai, ekdum perfect," the UP-wallah rickshaw driver said before continuing, "par jhoot ka sahara leta hai satta mein aane ke liye (but he takes recourse to lies to come to power). He says he won't do a thing, and then reverses his decision and goes ahead and does that very thing."

While this in itself cannot be construed to be a lie in the context of lies used to escape responsibility for actions, cover up frauds, evade punishment and the like, the Indian street however sees what constitutes a lie, a tad differently.

Here, it's about the honour of your word. If you say you won't form a Government with the help of the Congress, you will be held accountable for your word by people who cannot stand the Congress and voted for you to make a clean break with the seemingly much despised national party largely seen to be corrupt and inefficient on the back of successive scams uncovered in its latest term in office under the helm of Manmohan Singh.

That Arvind Kejriwal went back on his word of not taking the help of the Congress to form the Govt. in Delhi after the assembly elections there has not been forgotten by many.

The perception (of going back on your word) looks likely to cost Arvind Kejriwal (and AAP) many votes. How much is anybody's guess.

About Me

At the turn of the century I returned to Bombay from Goa, not an easy decision to make. A software company let me in, then another, then yet another. Time ran past. This time around I was wise enough not to give chase. So occasionally I take my camera along, searching for corners, finding them where none exist. And some of them are painted blue.